The Ithaca College Choir will perform its home concert of the 2014 Choir Tour this Saturday, March 22, at 8:15 pm.

The Ithaca College Choir completed its annual choir tour this Sunday. The tour took the choir to Danbury, CT, Boston, MA, Newton, NJ, and New York City. In each venue, the choir was greeted with high praise and enthusiasm for their beautiful sound, expressiveness, varied staging and programming, and excellence.

The Ithaca College Choir will perform its home concert of the 2014 Choir Tour this Saturday, March 22, at 8:15 pm.

The tour program was called “Ithaca, My Ithaca.”

While the tour program is a celebration of Ithaca for us, it is a celebration of any place that is home. The idea for the program came from the composition that was commissioned for the choir this year. The composer, Dominick DiOrio, at the request of conductor Janet Galván set the text of the poem “Ithaka” by Greek poet, Cavafy. The poem describes a journey to Ithaca, but Ithaca is an ideal rather than a place. This composition was met with great enthusiasm on the tour.

From this center piece of “the Journey to Ithaca,” the program was divided into several sections.
The Conservatory and the Community – Ithaca College began as a Conservatory of Music, and this set celebrates one of the great monuments of western music, as we sing two choruses from Haydn’s “The Creation.”

Ithaca and Sense of Home includes the DiOrio composition as well as Verdi’s “Va Pensiero” which is from the opera Nabucco. Dan Forrest’s “Entreat Me Not To Leave You” is from a Biblical text in which a young woman tells her mother-in-law that her home is with her family. “Lead, Kindly Light” describes a journey to Heaven. MLK is a lullaby written by U2 as a tribute to Martin Luther King. This shows how the boundaries of choral music are expanding.

Music has always brought people together at Ithaca College, and the first half ends with a rousing song of fellowship by Brahms.

The second half begins with the idea of Ithaca and inspiration. The choir will lead off with a piece by Michael McGlynn who has been instrumental in developing a choral tradition in Ireland. McGlynn skyped with the choir and told them that his roots were in rock music, and this piece was written in the key that his motorcycle hummed in as he drove to see his girlfriend. This is followed by a composition by graduate student Chris Harris (conducted by the composer). The text is by Langston Hughes.

The second set in this half of the program is Ithaca and the Global Community and features a variety of pieces from various places. The set begins with a Hawaiian piece conducted by graduate student Justin Ka’upu. The group then performs a Traditional Haitian piece about coffee. This is followed by Al Shlosha, a Hebrew piece composed by Ithaca alumnus Allan E. Naplan. This set closes with a Russian folk song that is a tongue twister.

The final set is a set of spirituals. The choir has always embraced spirituals as central to the repertoire, and we continue this proud tradition as we close with three selections at the heart of the genre. We dedicate this final section to Lawrence Doebler, who was the Director of Choral Activities fro 35 years and began the tradition of inviting alumni to sing with us at the end of the concert.

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